Hudson Structured confirms legacy appetite with £23.2m Compre investment

Confirming its appetite to source returns for its investors from legacy and run-off insurance and reinsurance business, specialist investment manager Hudson Structured is making a $23.2 million investment in legacy specialist Compre Group.

Compre is a European based legacy or run-off insurance and reinsurance specialist with a focus on non-life portfolios of risk.

With a track-record of more than thirty years acquiring legacy non-life insurance and reinsurance portfolios, in deals struck across Europe with some of the largest carriers in the business, Compre is one of the specialists in that space with an eye on growth opportunities at this time.

Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd., the insurance-linked securities (ILS), reinsurance- and transportation- focused investment manager that undertakes its re/insurance investment business as HSCM Bermuda Management Company, also has a liking for the legacy area of the market and has already made allocations to that segment.

Back in 2017, Hudson Structured participated as a lead investor in a $45.5 million private debt transaction issued for Catalina General Insurance Ltd., a subsidiary of legacy casualty sector specialist Catalina Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd.

Then, much more recently, Hudson Structured made a $20 million equity investment in specialist non-life insurance and reinsurance legacy investor and program manager Randall & Quilter (R&Q) Investment Holdings in April 2020.

Both these deals demonstrated the investment managers liking for returns from legacy portfolios of insurance and reinsurance risk, where it feels value has often been locked-up and can be extracted for its investors through prudent investments in the right structures and company teams.

Now, a third legacy specific company investment has come to light, in documents seen by Artemis that show Hudson Structured as making a £23.2 million investment in Cambridge Topco Limited, an entity owned by UK private equity investor CBPE Capital Ltd. which invested in and acquired Compre back in 2015.

Hudson Structured, through a fund entity named HS Santanoni LP has entered into a subscription agreement with a subsidiary of Cambridge Topco to provide additional capital amounting to £23.2 million for use in the Compre business.

The documents show that the additional capital investment from Hudson Structured remained subject to regulatory approval as of the end of 2019 and it’s not known at this stage whether the funding has closed by this time.

The capital injection will help Compre group businesses to acquire new portfolios or companies in run-off, the documents state.

Hudson Structured has now taken stakes in three leading legacy insurance and reinsurance sector specialists, each of which also appear complementary as well, further confirming the managers appetite for extracting value from legacy and run-off portfolios of risk.